FLOSS

If you are looking for a DVD of the MacMillan version you have several to choose from recorded at different stages of the ballet's history,two recorded during MacMillan's lifetime and two since then. The earliest has the original costume designs which are less like standard ballet costumes than the current ones.The Romeo and Juliet are Nureyev Fonteyn with the supporting roles danced by the original cast. It includes Blair as Mercutio so you see the role played as created and, if I recall correctly, an incredibly young Dowell as Benvolio.The drawback for me are Fonteyn and Nureyev,who were great artists,but Fonteyn isn't Seymour and Nureyev isn't Gable or for that matter Wall.I recognise that this will not be of concern to anyone who didn't see a performance by any of the dancers on whom the roles were created.It is a fascinating record of the company and the way the ballet was danced in its early years. The drawback is that I believe that it is only available as a DVD playable in zone 1. The second recording has a cast headed by Eagling Ferri made during MacMillan's lifetime.This has Stephen Jeffries as Mercutio. His presence in the cast is a recommendation in itself.There are two more recent recordings of the MacMillan version with Rojo and Acosta and the most recent with Cuthbertson and Bonelli.All of the Royal Ballet recordings have casts of dancing actors which is what MacMillan expected to see on stage. I don't think that I would want a recording of this version in which the subsidiary roles are not strongly differentiated.MacMillan created characters to be inhabited by the dancer rather than roles to be performed. There is a recording of the Lavrovsky version with Ulanova. This is fascinating for all sorts of reasons not only because Ulanova was the first Juliet but because she was one of the greatest dancers of the twentieth century and she does it all within the bounds set by her classical training. The Lavrovsky version of the ballet is the source of all subsequent versions except Ashton's both Cranko and MacMillan's versions are clearly heavily dependent on it. Ulanova's headlong rush with cape flying was an iconic image of Lavrovsky's Juliet which MacMillan appropriated for his own version.As far as Nureyev's Romeo and Juliet is concerned I have to confess that I find, as with so many of his productions, it is all a bit too frenetically busy. But that is just my opinion. There are others who love it.

In this context "somebody" means a senior member of the management team who can do something about the invisibility of the stage action not a member of the audience. However, as an audience member, you could always leave a comment about the lack of visibility of key aspects of the staging by leaving a message on the Covent Garden website where they ask you to say what you thought of the performance. Last year, early on in the season, several people complained about the effect of the atmospheric lighting in the Branstrup piece which had transferred from the Snape Maltings. At the second performance the lighting was significantly improved. As far as the staging of the tomb scene is concerned Juliet's last resting place used to be flanked by two slabs, one on either side of it.The slab on the right was occupied by Tybalt's body and that on the left by another body, This second slab allowed Romeo to linger behind it before stepping from behind it to confront Paris.It used to be much clearer that Paris had drawn his dagger than is the case now, so it didn't look as if Romeo had become a homocidal maniac. As this latest revival is supposed to represent a return to the original choreographic text with the accretions of additional stage business removed it would be fascinating to know how far back they have actually gone and whether some of the changes are the result of Lady M's intervention rather than a return to the choreographic "ur-text". I can't help feeling that it is a pity that no one seems to have involved people like Seymour and Drew in this revival. While they have tightened up the sword fights, and not before time,there are a couple of sections in the text that still need work to be done on them to improve their effectiveness. There are still several occasions where one of the main characters is confronted by three opposing swordsmen and yet is able to turn his back on them without anyone stabbing him in the back.It is so nice to think that, while they ignore Duke Escalus, the youth of Verona brawl according to a set of rules that promote fair play and protect them in such circumstances. .Can anyone account for the high body count at the end of the first brawl? In the act one fight scene you are lucky to see anyone hit during the sword fight let alone mortally wounded.Does anyone know why there are suddenly so many dead bodies? As far as I can see they all die spontaneously perhaps from over exertion.The second bit of action that needs work to sort it out is the sword fight with Romeo after Mercutio's death. During the course of the fight Tybalt runs to the steps and jumps off them for no apparent reason as Romeo is nowhere near him. When I first saw the ballet Romeo used to force Tybalt, generally David Drew, up the a couple of the steps during the course of the fight. Tybalt then escaped Romeo by slipping round the pillar to the left of the steps;before he met his end centre stage.It used to look a bit like the sword fight in the Prisoner of Zenda between Ronald Coleman and Basil Rathbone,which for all I know was MacMillan's source material.Then there is the problem of Tybalt's death throes. I have only seen one Tybalt who managed to make the scene work. After he had received his fatal wound instead of getting up and throwing himself about on the stage as if he was trying to score a try this Tybalt looked up totally bewildered and kept on trying to get to his feet. He kept slithering back on to the stage a bit like an animal that had been pole axed.I can't remember who the dancer was,but I am certain that the performance took place during MacMillan's lifetime. I thought at the time that instead of merely approving the performance MacMillan must have been overjoyed by it as it was one of the few truly successful accounts of the scene that I have seen. As for the harlots,the roles were created on dancers with real stage presence and strong technique who could make walking across the stage compelling.For years Bergsma and Mason were the company's regular Lilac Fairies and Myrthes If the scenes involving the harlots lack impact that has to be because of the way the roles are cast as the choreography has not been altered.The harlots should provide a contrast with the townswomen and all the other women that you see in the ballet including Juliet by their confidence in themselves which is expressed in their steely technique,large scale dancing and vibrant stage personalities.They have become exceptionally boring over the years as the roles have increasingly been given to dancers who dance daintily have limited stage presence and are just too ladylike.

Not unsurprisingly both MacMillan and Ashton actually worked to incorporate references to the text in their choreography.Ashton clearly shows Tybalt as "prince of cats" in his choreography while MacMillan incorporates "holy palmer's kisses" in his choreography,or at least it does if Romeo doesn't try to kiss Juliet before they place their palms together and he doesn't cover her hand.with kisses. The play makes it clear that the civic authorities of Verona have no way of dealing with the civil strife, it is after all only the deaths of Romeo and Juliet which brings it to an end. In the ballet as you have no spoken text Escalus has to be weak and ineffectual to explain all that brawling in the street. My recollection is that Leslie Edwards played him that way and as he had a virtual monopoly of the role for years I have always assumed that is the way MacMillan wanted the role to be played. As for the harlots and the street scenes with all that interminable padding,well although I recognise the need for them in order to give Romeo a breather, I do find them singularly lacking in interest.And so far in this run I have noticed them far more than I do normally. This tells you how involved I have felt with the performances that I have seen, which for me have felt more like rehearsals and displays of faultless technique than full blooded performances.I would say anaemic,but I can't spell it. In the footage of the rehearsal Saunders said that the fiftieth anniversary revival restored details that have been lost over the years. I am pleased to see that the leper is no longer treated as a long lost friend by members of the corps although they still get too close to him. At least so far he hasn't tried to dance which I recall happened at the last revival but whatever happened to the butchers with their sides of meat? The business in the tomb doesn't work as well as it used to when Tybalt's body was laid out on a slab and Juliet bumped into it and was able to recoil from it which helped establish the horror of the place. Someone commented on the hairstyles of the female corps, Rosaline and Lady Capulet.The high forehead was incredibly fashionable as can be seen in pictures by painters like Pisanello.As originally conceived the costume designs were intended to be as far removed from ballet design as you could get. Georgiadis' designs have been modified over the years and become more ballet like but the hairstyle has remained unaltered.How a woman wore her hair was symbolic of her marital status. Strictly as wearing loose hair was a symbol of virginity Juliet shouldn't have her hair up in the ballroom scene or at later in the ballet as her parents are unaware of her marriage.But there are practical problems if you dance with loose hair as everyone can see in Balanchine's Serenade where three women now dance with loose hair at one point rather than only one.As to the coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth I she wears her hair loose, as did her older sister Mary at her coronation, to symbolise her unmarried status. Later portraits show her without her hair loose to symbolise her marriage to her people. Someone described the sets as cumbersome and implied that they took up too much of the stage. I think that we need judge the set designs by their flexibility.I think that they work extremely well in establishing place and mood and allow for pretty rapid scene changes.The designs were made for a pre-technological age stage and they do the job they were designed to do.The main fixed set ensures that most of the action takes place where it is visible to the vast majority of the audience.One would like to think that somebody notices when Benvolio, Mercutio and Romeo get too close to the procenium arch or are masked by it but if other productions are anything to go by no one notices visibility problems or is concerned by them.

Given that it is fifty years since MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet received its first performance it was never on the cards that 2015 would be a Romeo and Juliet free year at Covent Garden. Lady M would have been very put out if that significant anniversary had passed unnoticed. Then there is the 1616 factor. Next year we shall be commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's death an excuse for ENB to put their Romeo and Juliet on stage again, that is if they felt that they needed one.Fortunately the Royal Ballet have Wheeldon's Winter's Tale to hand for that occasion. In some ways it would be nice if the two companies could sort out their annual programming but that would mean that we would not get to see the productions that we prefer. So while in theory I like ENB's Swan lake because it has so much Ashton choreography in it in practice I find it disappointing because no one dances the choreography that well.Then there is the problem of casting if a company seems to be going out of its way to cast the least likely dancers in important roles you come away feeling that you haven't really seen the ballet. Having lived outside London I don't think that a company's repertory should be overly influenced by what other companies are performing in London in a particular season. And while it would be nice to persuade audiences to see other works it is very difficult to persuade audiences who want a good night out to pay to see something that they are concerned that they might not enjoy.Theatre history is full performances that we would love to have seen but which the contemporary audience did not rate as highly as the pantomime. I seem to recall that in the 1970's when MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet was still a recent work that audiences didn't find themselves suffering from Romeo and Juliet fatigue if programming decisions forced them to see the MacMillan and the Cranko version in the same year.But then who was going to complain about seeing Seymour and Wall. Sibley and Dowell and Cragun and Haydee in a twelve month? One of the things that was different,it seems to me, was that the dancers inhabited their roles and were not dancing the roles of Romeo or Juliet or Mercutio to show the audience how beautifully they could execute the steps that the choreographers had set. They were portraying the characters in the same way that great actors do. This may sound strange to some members of the forum but you did not notice that Seymour or Haydee were dancing you saw them "being" Juliet and that makes all the difference to the number of performances you may want to see in a couple of months. The performances all seemed far more urgent because the music was not played as moderately as it is now.MacMillan's balcony pas de deux had greater impact because it wasn't all danced at a moderate pace.Romeo's solos were impetuous and gave a real sense of being ruled by passion which meant that the moments of stillness had greater impact too.It seems to me that it is a question of casting and performance style. In the world of classical dance there are those who place emphasis on dance as an expressive art form and those who see technical display as an end in itself. In the imagination of a great choreographer the tension between the expressiveness and the technique can be the source of great inspiration.Perhaps too many of the dancers who we have seen recently appear to have been more concerned to be seen to execute steps correctly than they have been on the emotional impact of their performance.It seems to me to be more a question of recruitment,casting and coaching than choice of repertory that is the root of the problem..

At this stage in his career I am not surprised that Ed is not doing Romeo. In MacLeary's words "Act I Romeo kills them".There comes a point in every dancer's career when they drop certain roles either because they want to or because management is anxious to ensure that the next generation has their chance. If Ed were dancing Romeo that would mean either two more performances in the run or one of the younger casts not being given a debut this year.I don't think that RB is an institution that learns much from its history but I imagine that no one wants a repeat of the "Fonteyn effect" with talented young dancers being held back by mature established ones

SwissBalletfan.No one is going to endanger a major revival by casting a young dancer if they don't have faith in their ability to perform the role in question. As this is Ratmansky's production I imagine that the casting has to pass muster with him.It may be that casting a young dancer will actually be an advantage as he is far less likely to be wedded to a conviction that he knows how the prince's role should be performed.If anyone is going to unbalance the production it is likely to be the stars in the cast whose views on performance style might be at variance with Petipa's as far as minor matters such as tempi and height of arabesques are concerned. I wish I were able to see the production as I am curious about this reconstruction particularly after the Munich Paquita.Lucky you. It could well be that you are going to witness ballet history being made.

To those who are going to buy tickets. The reality is that you will get a pretty good performance whichever cast you see.I have to say that I find the prospect of seeing a cast that managed to secure a full five stars from Clement Crisp but which only gained muted approval from Mr Monahan of the Telegraph intriguing.Mr. Crisp is usually the critic who expresses modified rapture in response to performance that have exhausted other critics' expressions of enthusiasm.Mr Monahan is usually at the head of the cheerleaders and I don't always understand his enthusiasms. Anyone who did not see the streaming of the R and J rehearsal needs to know that it is still available on line and very interesting.It would appear that this revival shows a cleaned version of the ballet with bits of "business" which weren't part of the original removed.

In my experience most people find it incredibly easy to say one thing and do the opposite. They find it so easy that they are totally convinced that they always act in accordance with their stated principles and are often genuinely surprised to learn that they rarely apply those principles in daily life.As it is part of being human it is hardly surprising that institutions do the same thing.The inconsistency of the school towards competitions might be attributable to the recent change in director and the very different state of the school when each took over. As I understand it Miss Stock's appointment was the result of a request made to her rather than the usual bureaucratic recruitment procedure.She appears to have done a great deal to improve the teaching and restore the school's reputation.As an Australian she probably felt that competitions were a normal part of a trainee dancer's life and that success in them enhanced the school's reputation.It is quite possible that competitions play a large part in explaining the number of dancers that Australia produces. Perhaps they help sustain both a young dancer's interest in training at a time when they might otherwise abandon it completely and a family's support for the student. Mr Powney comes from a different background but more importantly he has taken over a school which appears to be in rude health. Perhaps he feels that the current state of the school makes it possible to shift the emphasis towards the artistic application of technique rather than simply displaying it.Perhaps he is doing what he says he is doing perhaps he merely believes that he is.We shall have to see what happens at the school and in the company in the next few years.

Penelope personally I would hold on to the ticket. I suspect that Lamb and Muntagirov will be somewhat different from Lamb and McRae. Can I ask do you find that the critic of the Telegraph experiences performances in the way that you do? I tend to find that even if I have been to the performance that he is writing about I haven't been to the performance that he is describing.

Well we shall just have to see what happens under the new regime at the school now that the director has his feet well and truly under the table.Of course I can't imagine the school pulling out of offering places to prize winners either. Then there is the whole question of the Covent Garden company's recruitment policies or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is really a question of what the company does with the dancers it recruits particularly those that come from the school. At least there is some evidence with the casting of the current run of Romeo and Juliet that this director really is interested in developing his company rather than buying in talent.However it could be a blip with normal service resumed very quickly Remember that the company has always recruited internationally. The difference is that it was less obvious in the past when the dancers concerned had British surnames and a significant number of them had been at the school before entering the company. You could ask some very interesting questions about why it is that a country like Australia produces so many fine dancers given the size of the population. It's not genetic difference because even now a significant part of the population shares our gene pool.. Is it simply that there are more good teachers there or is it a subtle mixture of other factors such as greater social acceptance of competitiveness;assessing and grading the acquisition and application of skills; of being seen to try hard rather than living with and accepting the myth of effortless superiority;national obsession with participating in active pastimes such as sport or a greater acceptance of dance as a career? Perhaps the problem for both ballet and tennis in this country is that they are far more the preserve of the middle class here than they are elsewhere .Perhaps in Australia ballet classes are both socially and financially more accessible than they are here.Perhaps here ballet classes are more of a hobby that participants abandon when they get into their teens than they are elsewhere. Ido not pretend to know the answers and nothing that I have written should be taken as a criticism of those attending ballet classes or vocational schools. I know that from time to time there has been criticism of training methods here which are said to leave students here lagging behind their contemporaries abroad.But should teachers be more concerned with quantity than quality or begin pointwork when a child's feet may be damaged because that is done elsewhere? Perhaps the problem has less to do with technical training than it has to do with the psychological approach of the teachers. Belinda Hatley has spoken about British dancers being made to feel rubbish and Claire Calvert has described the pressure of the assessment process.Now only poor teachers feel the need to establish their superiority over their pupils by belittling them.There are ways of telling students that they need to improve and how to do so,that do not involve making students feel bad about themselves . As far as assessments are concerned surely they are part and parcel of everyday life in all major ballet schools. Are pupils in all schools adversely effected by the process or do some schools manage to make it less traumatic? Again I have seen it suggested by someone with considerable experience of ballet training that schools are too ready to assess out pupils who are experiencing difficulties because they don't have a perfect ballet body.Her concern was that it was easy to train the perfect ballet body but that real teaching skill lay in training the less than perfect body. She expressed the view that such students are often the ones who,because they have to work that much harder,make the most interesting artists.She concluded that the obsession with the ideal body was having an adverse impact on ballet.

If i recall correctly when the current director of the RBS spoke to London Ballet Circle some months ago he expressed concern that there were young dancers whose training seemed to be directed towards competitions rather than performance. By which I think he meant that they could dance the few classical solos that loom large in competition but lacked any concept of artistry.That does not mean that I think that this applies to the winner of the Genee gold medal or any of the competitors that I saw.The young South African who won gold stood out because he gave a real performance of the quirky MacMillan solo that he chose. The choice of classical solos available included both nineteenth and twentieth century choreography.Most of the competitors stuck with the nineteenth century. Perhaps wisely none of the boys attempted the Blue Skater solo and the two girls who attempted the apparently simple langrous solo that Ashton created for Fairy Summer found that there was quite a bit more to it than meets the eye. i believe that de Valois was against competitions and I sometimes wonder what she would have made of Gailene Stock's attitude towards them. I expect that she would have adopted a pragmatic approach and would have been very pleased that the school had returned to form.This year's RBS school's matinee on the main stage showed a shift in emphasis to theatrical performance which produced fine performances of which a professional company would have been proud. I think that you can mount strong arguments for and against participating in competitions.Training should be directed towards creating an artist rather than developing performers who see dancing as a way of displaying technical skills.However too insular an attitude with absolute certainty in the superiority of your own system of training can degenerate into slackness and declining standards.As far as the Genee is concerned I am aware that quite a few of the dancers whose performance I have really admired have been medal winners Brenda Last, Doreen Wells and Leanne Benjamin spring to mind immediately. All in all a fascinating evening.

"Spectacular" is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of balletic versions of Romeo and Juliet.As far as MacMillan's balcony pas de deux is concerned it is extremely difficult to bring off effectively if there is no balcony, the music is recorded and the lighting is wrong. When the dancers are left simply standing looking at each other you really notice all those bars of music in which there is no dancing.Music which usually accompanies Juliet staring down from the balcony and Romeo lurking in the shadows and then making himself known to her does not work in quite the same way when the dancers are forced to stand and stare at each other.With a balcony the dancers get off to a flying start without one it is all a bit flat and lacking in atmosphere more like a rehearsal than a performance.But you can't have everything and it was a good performance given the compromises that had to be made to make it possible. Although I would be happy if MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet were rested for say five years and we got a chance to see Ashton's version in the form danced by ENB thirty plus years ago I accept that the MacMillan version has considerable strengths. Perhaps the greatest of them is that it can be performed equally well as dance drama or as pure dance I think that it is the fact that it can be danced effectively at any point between the extremes of expressiveness and pure classical technique means that there are few dancers who don't bring something interesting to the roles of Romeo and Juliet. A far greater problem, for me, lies in the casting of Mercutio. which in my books is just as important as the titular roles. Dancers able to dance Mercutio seem to be in short supply Few of the dancers who I have seen recently in the role perform the off centre turns that are in the choreography or make much of Mercutio's taunting of Tybalt or the character's death.In many ways it seems to have been downgraded to a supporting role rather than one which is cast at principal level or at the very least with a dancer who is able to command the stage with his technique,personality and acting ability. As to who you should try to see? Well of course Osipova would have been interesting but I think that Lamb and Muntagirov could well turn out to be something special as they were exceptional together in Manon last year.Bonelli and Cuthbertson are well worth seeing. Cuthbertson is one of those dancers who does things her own way and makes you look at some roles afresh.For those who were not able to get tickets for Naghdi and Ball you could try for the day seats.I shall certainly be seeing them and Hayward too.While Nunez is a fine Ashton dancer,and there are too few in the company of whom that can be said, I don't find her that convincing in dramatic roles.She is too one note for me so she is not on my list of must see dancers in this ballet.However if the company were dancing Ashton's Romeo and Juliet she would probably be my first choice because everything is in the choreography in that version and she really understands how Ashton's choreography works. I haven't mentioned every casting permutation and no one should assume that omission means criticism.As far as Osipova's Juliet is concerned we shall have to wait for another season or two before we find out whether or not the role suits her.I think that Muntagirov may find it is of more assistance to his performance that he is now making his debut with someone who knows this version of the ballet really well. As far as the rest of the run is concerned I hope that if any further gaps appear in the schedule are filled from the company's ranks rather than outside it. I am sure that this season's new casts would benefit from additional performances. I .think that the reality is that whichever cast you see you are unlikely to be disappointed and if you are able to do so you should try and see a couple of casts,ideally an established one and one with newcomers in it. As far as comparing ticket prices for the Royal Ballet and ENB is concerned.I am not sure that comparing ENB and the Royal Ballet is really comparing like with like as the two companies are different in the number of dancers that they employ and the size of their respective repertories.I don't know whether state subsidy covers the same proportion of their costs. I suspect that ENB gets more of its costs from the state because it tours.As I understand it the Royal Ballet operates a system of cross subsidy so that popular ballets help cover the cost of its mixed bills. The company could cut costs in all sorts of ways, part time employment; letting older dancers go; only programming full length works and so on. I am not sure that I would like the results of pursuing a more hard nosed commercial approach as far as programming and casting is concerned.Artistically it would be a disaster.

Well of course Gluck is part of the history music of both the the German speaking world and France but I don't see why I have to restrict my enjoyment of Gluck's operas to CDs or add Paris to my regular theatre circuit. It is difficult enough as it is to see and hear everything I want. As far as Hasse is concerned I may have got this wrong but I believe that one of his operas will feature in next year's Handel festival.

Open rehearsal today. Anyone like to comment?

Nijinska's autobiography is extremely interesting and it is a great pity that the second volume never saw the light of day.There are some real gaps on the ballet front as far as biographies are concerned.I am hoping that the Petipa bicentenary produces a well written standard biography as well as more of his letters. Am I being too critical but I am tired of badly written books particularly biographies where the author forgets that he/she is writing a biography and either turns novelist or pseudo social historian either telling the reader what the subject of the book was thinking or feeling at key points or describing the society in which the subject was working. A prime example of the creative writing genre of biography is the recently published account of Balanchine's early years in Russia. In which the author spends a great deal of time telling you what George must have thought and felt. I suppose it could be that the book ended up as it did because the author found that there was not enough material on which to base a traditional biography but I would have happily settled for a slimmer volume about Balanchine and his forgotten muse. I also had difficulties with the new Markova biography because the author felt the need to turn social historian to tell her readers about English society at the time.The problem was that I was not entirely convinced by her account of early twentieth century London and theatre.I tried not to get sidetracked by this or by her style of writing but I did not always succeed.Of course having found her something of an unreliable narrator as far as the background that she gave I felt less inclined to accept what she was saying about Markova.I thought it was a great pity that Markova did not have a better writer as her most recent biographer.

Mab Gluck is a rarity in London. He wrote in excess of thirty operas and yet the Royal Opera, post 1945. has,up until now, only managed to stage his Viennese Orfeo, Alceste and Iphigenie en Tauride.Now I recognise that.the number of productions that an opera has clocked up is no indication of its quality as a theatrical work.The Zefferelli Tosca endured for years because it was such an effective staging and repeated stagings may simply indicate that the company has employed the wrong production team. As for the ENO I don't think that it has ever tackled Gluck reformed or otherwise. Here are the sad statistics. The Covent Garden company has staged three productions of the Viennese Orfeo,in 1953, 1969 and 1991 with concert performances in 2001. It has only staged Alceste once in 1981 for Janet Baker and as for Iphigenee in Tauride productions were staged in 1961 with a revival in 1973 and a new production in 2007. I would happily settle for concert performances of Iphigenie en Aulide ,Armide, Paride et Elena and Echo et Narcisse. It would be wonderful to have the opportunity to compare Gluck's Ezio with Handel's and his La Clemenza di Tito with Mozart's. I know that it is not going to happen at Covent Garden any time soon it's not Sir Tony's territory. Unfortunately the new music director at ENO is unlikely to announce a life long devotion to Gluck either.So we have to be grateful for the scraps that we are served.

Great fun .The programme notes are priceless and are, no doubt, the product of many years careful research in the archives. Is there a danger that the company is almost too good technically? Paquita was almost as good as the real thing. I am looking forward to the second programme.

In the last few weeks i have read George Burrow's The Bible in Spain. His account of his time with the London Bible Society selling Spanish translations of the gospel. Why? Because I thought I should.It reads like a picaresque novel rather than an earnest account of his struggles with the church and local government. He clearly read a great deal of eighteenth century literature as a youth and while he admits to a love of Defoe I think that like Dickens he must have read a lot of Tobias Smollett. Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov which tells of the experience of a young writer and playwright with a Moscow theatre, its star director.and his acting method. All of which is a thinly disguised account of the author's own experiences with the Moscow Arts Theatre and Stanislavsky.I can't recommend it highly enough. Arnold Bennet's The Old Wive's Tale. I am not sure what I was expecting. It tells of the lives of two sisters who are born into the family of the man who owns the best haberdashers in a town in the potteries which is clearly a very thinly disguised Burslem.The story covers most of Queen Victoria's reign. One sister stays in the town,marries one of the shop staff and with her husband takes over the running of the family business the other runs off with a travelling salesman who visits the shop on his rounds.The story of the sister who stays in the town is enlivened by a domestic murder committed by her husband's cousin.which leads to her husband's death.The runaway ends up in Paris where she is abandoned by her husband and ends up running a boarding house.She survives the Siege of Paris; is successful in business and eventually returns to her hometown. The characters are well drawn and credible.All in all it is a fascinating account of life in a provincial town. The Paris section while interesting feels slightly more contrived and the result of careful research than the account of life in a town in the potteries. Finally Solzenitzyn's August 1914 which has sat, unread, on a bookshelf for more years than I care to admit. The first fifty pages are heavy going because they are exposition enabling the reader to meet the characters both fictional and historic who stalk the pages of the novel.It is their experiences in the first ten days of the war which are the theme of the book.The book deals with the battle of Tannenberg which was a crushing defeat for the Russian army caused by lack of preparedness and the total incompetence of the generals on the ground and the High Command. The whole thing is held together by the presence of a colonel from HQ whose job is to find out what is happening on the ground. Meanwhile the generals are more concerned that they do nothing that will put them in danger of being blamed and prevent them being promoted and collecting their gongs. It really is a good read Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to why there were so few books by non English speakers on the BBC list? There were plenty I had not read but not for want of trying. I tried the Handmaid's Tale and it was not for me;ditto Little Women and quite a few more.Why no Bulgakov or Evelyn Waugh?

I agree musically the performance was outstanding. This is Gluck's French version of the opera which involved a lot of reworking and the inclusion of a significant dance element which are not merely dance interludes but an integral part of the opera. As there is so much dance music you have to provide dance or at least movement for these sections.Unfortunately Mr Shechter did not provide a dance text that had much to do with the action of the opera. The movement in the first section where the community is mourning Eurydice was unnecessary as the chorus is on stage at that point and the music does not, in my opinion, call for dance. The movement struck me as out of place and only served to draw attention to the differences between the movement of the chorus and dancers . In addition it meant that there was no contrast between the world of the living and the underworld.I think that as originally conceived there is meant to be a real contrast between the world of mourning mortals and that of the dead which is provided by the dance sequences. Mr S failed to provide that contrast by using dancers in act one where they were not required. In the second act the dancers portraying the Furies did dance grotesquely but Shechter showed little real enthusiasm or interest in the Blessed Spirits in the Elysian Fields. I found the staging odd as the chorus confronting Orphee were in front of the orchestra while the dancers portraying the Furies were on a raised stage behind it.There was a Glyndebourne production years ago of the Italian version where the chorus was kept off stage and the Furies were crawling and hanging off the gates to the Underworld.Far more theatrically effective than the current staging.The choreography for the Blessed Spirits was insipid rather than beautiful in simplicity. I can't help feeling that it should have flowed with the music. After the gods intervene for the second time there is a dance sequence which is broken by a short intervention by the chorus followed by a second suite of dances.I did not feel that Mr S really understood their function and thought that his choice of dance movement particularly the dancer who flung himself on the floor repeatedly was completely at odds with the music that was being played. There was too much gallumpping about. I too rather wished that they had asked Mark Morris to direct and choreograph.I somehow feel that what we would have seen would have been far more effective and in tune with the musical performance. For me it was choreography laid on top of the music rather than an integral part of the performance.

Petunia, I don't think that anyone can give sage advice on the issue of Friends' membership. Here is an observation. It is quite expensive if you are only able to make the occasional visit to Covent Garden.The money that you save from not joining would give you a bit more to spend on tickets. I think that the Linbury is going to your biggest problem because of its size. As far as the Ashton programme is concerned in your favour is that I think it unlikely that the performances will sell out at once although there are the Osipova fans who will book and those who have recently "discovered" Muntagirov as a result of his performances in Fille last season.Although there must be lots of people who are pleased to see Two Pigeons back in the repertory it is being performed before Christmas with another Ashton opener and not everyone will want to see the same ballet before and after Christmas with little change in casting.In addition the tickets for the January performances are going on sale before those who are unfamiliar with the ballet will have had a chance to see it.Not everyone who goes to ballet at Covent Garden goes to see BRB for whom Two Pigeons is a staple repertory piece.For many the thirty years of this Ashton ballet's absence from the Covent Garden stage means it is a ballet with which they are completely unfamiliar. As far as the Ashton mixed bill is concerned, bear in mind that both Rhapsody and Two Pigeons will look slightly different as each cast will bring something different to their roles.There is some interesting casting in this programme Osipova has not danced the Collier role in Rhapsody before and then there are Hayward and Hay who made a terrific impression at their matinee debut in the ballet in 2014, finally there are the casts for Two Pigeons at least three of which are, in my opinion, not to be missed. And then there is everything else going on in London at this time of year which makes life far more difficult and interesting. I hope that you manage to get the tickets that you want and that you enjoy the performances. Do tell us what you think of the performances that you see.

bangorballetboy. Thank you for the schedule.Perhaps I imagined it, but did not the performance on the 30th January start out with a gap in the casting for the Two Pigeons? I thought that the problem was caused by not wanting to cast the same dancer as the lead in Rhapsody and in Two Pigeons. Am I the only one to find it a little strange that Zucchetti is now due to dance the main role in Rhapsody and the Gipsy Man on the 28th January? I know that his role in Two Pigeons is not as long as that of the Young Man and it may not seem as demanding but the solo in the first act requires him to provide a real contrast to the Young Man; his movements need to be as strong at the end of the solo as they were at the beginning and they need to be expansive. Even allowing for the interval and the fact that the Gipsy Man does not have too much to do until his big solo it seems rather a lot to ask.I am surprised that they haven't taken the opportunity to cast someone else, if only for the one performance.As to just how big the solo needs to be,there is a story that Ashley Page told about being made to rehearse in a biker jacket by Ashton to get the expansiveness of gesture that Ashton wanted. I am looking forward to both runs of Two Pigeons this season and the accompanying ballets but I would not be surprised to see a few changes in the advertised casts on the basis of practicality,if nothing else, as far as Pigeons is concerned.Rhapsody is a real challenge. The fact that the company can muster three dancers for the lead male role is impressive,to say the least, it was after all a ballet which left a lot of people wondering who would dance it after the original cast.The idea that Ashton presents technical challenges still comes as a surprise to many.It's partly to do with the age of his ballets of course and the idea that technique has improved so much in the last thirty plus years but it also has something to do with the idea that has grown up that unlike MacMillan,Ashton is safe small scale and unchallenging.

I am not sure that I would be that happy if my parents had called me Jade.I think that I would wonder why my parents had not bothered to look the word up in a dictionary before they saddled me with it. I would wonder why I had been given a name which can mean not only a green stone that is used for ornaments but also a head strong disreputable woman or a broken down or vicious horse. If I were faced by your kindly Dr Jade Smith I suspect I would be spending my time wondering what her parents were thinking of when they named her rather than listening to what she was saying.I would not have that problem with Dr Margaret Smith.

Is anyone able to throw any light on David Bintley's continued reluctance to publish casting details until the last moment? I think I recall that when he introduced the policy he said that people booked for the company not specific dancers.I have always thought that the policy was entirely wrong headed and almost certainly has had an adverse impact on ticket sales. During Peter Wright's directorship the company was able to give casting details several months in advance and he clearly thought it was necessary to give that information to the public.Did David Bintley think that the company or the ballet going public had been transformed in some way when he took it over? We all know that you take a chance on who you will actually see when you book for specific casts because people sustain injury and fall ill but that is not a reason for not publishing those details.I have bought tickets for the mixed bill because I want to see it and I can only manage two of the performances but as far as Swan Lake is concerned I want to know who is dancing before I part with my money.

Well I managed to watch it by clicking on the icon on the big picture of Versailles.Don't be put off by the fact that it is in French it really is worth watching. The main message is that the culture that we associate with Louis XIV is essentially Roman Baroque and was originally brought to France by Cardinal Mazarin.Louis was his apt pupil,building on what he had been taught and out doing his master.That all the arts with which we associate his reign are the embodiment of royal power.His artists such as Le Brun create the style which exemplifies his regime.The establishment of the Academy is part of this exercise in artistic development and control. The original academicians were of course at the cutting edge of theatrical and literary art.It was an age of scientific and artistic development. The Ballet of the Night in which Louis appeared as Apollo was a theatrical expression of the Crown's defeat of le Fronde. The sun dispelling the night is the King overcoming the nobles(le Fronde) who threatened royal power.Louis uses the arts to project his power which amazes the rest of Europe.He visits Vaux where Fouquet has built a novel chateau with extraordinary gardens designed by Le Notre. He has Fouquet arrested because he sees him as a threat to royal power.Louis takes up his ideas at Versailles and out does him.Versailles is a message in stone and marble that the King has transformed the kingdom. He employs Colbert who in effect controls the image that both we and his contemporaries had of Louis. Every image whether it is painted, engraved or cast as a medal is under his control and is an expression of royal power. Colbert controls Louis' image and France itself.Everything is controlled. The modern world of arts or some aspects of it begin here.Music and dance become professionalised and so does their training.Dance as an expression of male power and control is important in court entertainment and among the military.Dance begins to become professionalised. If dance is to be taught to children who may become professional dancers the movements have to be categorised and codified.Lully's importance to French music is explained in terms of his being a man with an Italian training but without any baggage which makes it possible for him to create French opera. The Hall of Mirrors is significant because it was built after a great victory and le Brun the regime's official painter produces a series of paintings based on incidents in the life of Alexander the Great who is identified with Louis. For the first time the titles of the pictures on the frames are written in French rather than Latin. I must admit that the significance of this hadn't occurred to me before.This shift to the vernacular in France is roughly contemporary with the first books about scientific discoveries being published in England in the vernacular rather than Latin. By the time I had finished I felt I knew far more about why Bulgakov had written his play Moliere. So much of what he was writing about seventeenth century France in that play was so like his life in Stalin's Russia only the names were different. It's a great pity that this film will not turn up on the BBC with subtitles at some point but there is a great deal to enjoy in it without them. It does not say anything about the dire economic consequences of Louis' policies but it does explain a great deal about French culture then and now.

I agree that it is a step too far. I think it reveals the effects of the current government's view of the arts and their significance.Unfortunately we don't live in a country which believes that the arts in all their forms should be available to everyone.A very "nanny state" idea I know.The government's refusal to fund the arts adequately can, of course, be presented as a sad necessity caused by the mistakes of others but it strikes me that it has far more to do with the innate philistinism of a significant part of the governing elite.After all while male politicians are more than happy to reveal their love of football, in some cases a highly improbable enthusiasm, you don't hear many them express a love of theatre or cinema and to say you enjoyed opera or ballet would probably amount to political suicide. You can conjure up the horrendous headlines and the practically write the story.I have a funny feeling that the last politician who expressed any enthusiasm for the arts was Jenny Lee but then of course she had impeccable credentials and was very much pre Murdoch. I'm afraid I don't believe in the hairshirt policies being pursued by the Chancellor. But we live in a society in which everything is evaluated in purely cash terms.As far as the arts are concerned it's a case of if you love it so much pay for it.After all it is so easy to portray the serious arts as the reserve of a privileged elite who have money and whose pastimes are being subsidised by the poor. The fact that the arts have to do more and more to cover their costs through donations and ticket sales means of course that they are less accessible to people who have little or no experience of theatre, ballet and opera and are discouraged from trying them because of the cost and the idea that they are not for them and would feel out of place.The result of the decreasing subsidy element in companies' finances means that the arts become the preserve of the initiated who had access to them from a relatively early age. I suspect that if a survey of the arts audience were to be undertaken it would reveal that the vast majority had started theatre going when young,had received a broad education which had an arts bias and had higher educational attainments than the average member of their age cohort.I suspect that this is more true of the current audience than it was thirty years ago and is likely to get worse.